This is a place holder. I promise to put up a real post, but in case any of my bloggy friends are out there, I’d really like to hear from you. I’ve fallen off the wagon big time. Eating like crap, gorging on bags of Skittles and bottles of Coke, not exercising at all, and generally not taking great care of myself. I need to do a few things to get myself back on track. I’m starting with these:

Last week, I was on business travel in San Francisco. I love traveling out there, even though I don’t get nearly enough time to enjoy the city. I have certain things I need to do while I’m out there, such as eat dim sum and get a coffee (or, at least two a day) at Blue Bottle.

My co-worker Mel and I are slightly obsessed with Blue Bottle. We arrive at the conference and immediately start scouring the agenda for gaps where we can escape for an hour. I am so impressed with us, we managed to get there three times last week and also introduced two people to Blue Bottle. Success!!!

As for dim sum, I went to Tian Sing for the third time. It’s not the very best, but it’s quite good and only a few blocks from the hotel. With pictures like this on the menu, I decided to stick to the pescatarian options.

The “salt and pepper tofu” was absolutely outstanding, as were the various dumplings. Oh, and the chinese broccoli. I couldn’t stop eating this stuff:

My other excitement in San Francisco was shopping. Unfortunately, no, I don’t mean that I hit up the trendy shops in Haight Ashbury. No, no, I went around the corner from the hotel and shopped at Old Navy and Banana Republic. In good news, I unexpectedly dropped a pants size. So I got me some skinny jeans. Boom shakalaka.

Back home, it’s time to get back to basics — eat well and exercise. Starting with what goes in, we hit up the grocery store today. The biggest thing is, I need to bring good eats to the office for lunch. No more spending extravagant amounts of money on crappy fast food. So tonight, I put on my inner chef’s hat and slaved over threw together two beautiful vegan meals — Angela’s Butternut Squash Mac ‘n’ Cheeze and Mama Pea’s Teriyaki Tofu. For dinner I had a little of each, and I couldn’t believe how delicious they were. The mac ‘n’ cheeze was surprisingly cheesy tasting. It definitely had the comfort food cheese factor. The teriyaki tofu was also delicious, and I felt all Martha Stewarty making my own teriyaki sauce.

For the last three days, I’ve been doing a juice cleanse. I’ll tell you *all about it* tomorrow. For now, I want to go to bed soon so that I can stop thinking about food.

Unable to eat any food, last evening I decided it was a good time to cook. Not just to cook, but to cook delicious smelling food. CRAZY. So, I busted out my Peas & Thank You cookbook and whipped up Mama Pea’s Spicy African Peanut Soup. It was really easy to make. Chop up a sweet potato, toss it in the slow cooker with cans of chickpeas, fire roasted tomatoes, coconut milk, lentils, pb, and some spices. Turn it on for 3-4 hours and voila!

While this was cooking, my house smelled divine. This was absolute torture for me in my cleansing mode.

So at 10:30 PM the soup was finished… and it hit me. The soup was boiling hot. It would take too long to cool down enough to refrigerate it. What was I supposed to do with it? I decided to leave it on the counter, since every night I get up to pee at least twice.

I didn’t wake up until 6:30 AM this morning. Eight hours later. The soup had been on the counter for eight hours.

Eight Hours!!!

I am so depressed. It smelled so delicious. I was really looking forward to eating it tomorrow once solid foods are allowed back in my life. Not to mention the fact that it probably cost over $10 to prepare.

Do you read Budget Blonde? The Budget Blonde, Cat, is into organization and craftiness, and I just love her blog. Last year, she moved with her husband to Grenada (if you don’t have an atlas nearby, Grenada is in the Caribbean just north of Venezuela.🙂 Inyhoo, Cat has a series on her blog called “This Is {Wherever} Wednesday” where she shares something interesting about living in Grenada and offers her readers the chance to share something interesting about where you live! So this week, I am happy to link up and share my recent post, “I Live Here, I Should Visit,” all about living in Washington, D.C. Link up, yourself!

Kindergarten Craziness

Somehow, I ended up being J’s kindergarten “room mom.” I was picking J up from school one day and his teacher ran out after us and asked me if I would agree to be room mom. Of course, in my typical fashion, I answered with a question. “What do I have to do?” Forgive me. I’m a working mom. I’m also terrible at organizing and planning. Terrible. Thankfully, it’s more of an honorary title than anything. My only responsibility is to throw two parties during the year, a Valentine’s party and an end-of-year party. Unless you live under a rock, you know that Valentine’s day was this week, meaning the first of my two obligations is officially finito! And if I do say so myself, I managed to pull off a pretty fun time! There was “pin the heart on the bear”…

Like my fancy artwork?

Cookie decoration (with lots of toppings!)…

Tissue paper flowers (which was a disaster, therefore no photos!)…

and L-O-V-E-<3 Bingo!

It was a wonderful party. The kids had such a great time. And, I admit, I had two other moms there with me who I couldn’t have done without!

Fooooooood!!!!

If you follow me on Pinterest, you may have noticed that I’ve been posting a lot of food and recipes lately. You see, I’m on day 2 of a 3-day juice cleanse. I’ll blog all about the experience once it’s over but suffice it to say, I am obsessed with the very idea of food right now. Just on Monday, I was a perfectly happy food-eating person, out to a dushi lunch with two wonderful friends. Wait, you say, don’t you mean sushi? Check out Box F. Haha!

I’ve lived in this city for going on fourteen years now. I often brag to out-of-town friends and family about all my city has to offer. Museums, exhibitions, concerts, and other programs, many of which are FREE. But in reality, I rarely take advantage of this. I would say I make it to one of these free offerings once or twice a year, usually when someone from out of town is visiting. In 1998, shortly after moving to DC, the Van Gogh museum’s entire collection of Van Goghs was at the National Gallery of Art for about three months while the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam underwent renovation. This exhibit was called “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs, and I took home a poster of The Bedroom, which hung appropriately for years in my efficiency apartment.

In 2005, we went to the Toulouse-Lautrec and Monmartre exhibit, also at the National Gallery of Art. And in 2007, we enjoed the Edward Hopper exhibit, where I was first captivated by the melancholy Nighthawks.

But like I said, I generally get to the museums of DC only a couple of times a year. Then about a month ago, I thought that with J being five now, we should start taking more advantage of what this city has to offer, especially since so much of it is free. So I hopped online and looked to see what we could do.

The National Museum of Natural History — Tarantula Feeding, IMAX movie, and lunch

The National Museum of Natural History was having a tarantula feeding, which J thought sounded pretty cool, so we decided to go see that. And while we’re at it, why not see an IMAX movie. They were showing “Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia” in 3D — awesome! And heck, might as well stop in the museum cafe for some lunch.

By the time our wonderful day in the city was complete, our “free” day out totaled forty dollars — $20 for the movie and about $20 for lunch!!!

The National Gallery of Art – Monster Mash

So last weekend, we decided to do it again, but this time try to really take advantage of what was free. The National Gallery of Art was having a kids program called “Monster Mash”. It was an hour-long program showing five animated shorts followed by a 30-minute film called The Gruffalo. The five shorts included Mike’s New Car, starring the loveable Mike and Sully of Monsters, Inc.

Another of the shorts was called Le Silence Sous L’Ecorce (The Silence Beneath the Bark). I think Kath will love this one, in particular.

The feature film of the program was called The Gruffalo. From the nga.gov site, The Gruffalo is “based on the children’s picture book by Julia Donaldson, a magical story of a forest mouse who outwits several dangerous predators, one by one, with his made-up tales of a fearsome beast called the Gruffalo. Of course, such a bizarre creature could never exist—or could it…?” It was a very cute film, starring some famous voices such as Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid from the Harry Potter series) as the gruffalo.

This time we made it home after spending less than $5 — I had to get J a little something from the gift shop.😉

National Museum of the American Indian – The Power of Chocolate

We had so much fun at the film program, I thought we should try to find another activity in the city this weekend. Lucky for me, the National Museum of the American Indian had an event called The Power of Chocolate, presenting “a rare opportunity for visitors to explore chocolate’s culture, history, and place in contemporary society.” Here was our view as we approached the museum.

The U.S. Capitol Building

When we arrived at the museum, we waited in a short line to learn about the cacao tree, cacao pods, and how the cacao pod eventually becomes chocolate.

The man on the left is explaining how the cacao seeds are fermented then crushed to remove the cacao nibs.

This man was crushing the nibs to make pure chocolate. Native Americans didn’t eat chocolate. They only used it to make a beverage.

Turning the chocolate into a yummy drink.

At the end of that, we got a small taste of Mexican hot chocolate, which is spiced with chili powder and mmm mmm good. After that, we had lunch at the museum cafe, which serves Native American cuisine. I had wild rice with cranberries, nuts, and watercress.

It was delicious! J had barbacoa beef tacos. And we split a fry bread, which seemed to be halfway between bread and donut (well, more bready than donutty). I remembered seeing an episode of Jillian Michaels’ Losing It With Jillian show where she went to a reservation to show the Native Americans how to eat healthier. She freaked out when she saw the fry bread (and not the same way I freaked out when I saw it).

Have you ever had fry bread? It was sinfully good.

After lunch, we watched a Bolivian dance performance in the atrium. I have a friend who is a Bolivian dancer, so I’ve grown to be quite a fan over the years! The first performance was slow and rhythmic, and the dancers had huge feathered headdresses.

The second was faster-paced and had some exciting costumes with scary masks.

This little girl was so cute, wearing her blue sequined shoes that blinked. Soemthing tells me they didn’t have shoes like that in ancient Bolivia.

The last performance was my favorite — a couples dance. It had clapping and foot stomping, and I could totally see peasants doing this dance at an evening gathering after a long days’ work.

After the Bolivian dancing, we went up to the interactive children’s area of the museum, called imagiNATIONS, where J was able to do a craft project.

We had such a great time at the Power of Chocolate event at the American Indian museum. Grand total was about $20 for the food and bottled waters (and a giant Mexican hot chocolate for me!!!).

So now, I am totally obsessed with everything this city has to offer. I feel like I live here, I should visit once in a while!

Next week is President’s weekend, and there are lots of family-friendly events. Can’t wait!

Now that I have an office, I can’t just zip down to the kitchen for lunch in between meetings. I have to plan ahead, bring lunch, or go out. So far I haven’t brought my lunch once. It’s only been a week, but still, I need to get in the habit of bringing my lunch and snacks. Otherwise, pretty soon I’ll succumb to this:

Not the worst, but not the best. I can do better. I need to plan ahead, pack breakfast and lunch. I actually do like going out for lunch sometimes, for the fresh air, but I need to pack 2-3 times a week.